Married, With Children

Lake Forest Academy Couple Raise Teens By The Hundreds

October 20, 1991|By Linda Lipp.

At a time of life when most couples are content to relax and enjoy the peace that descends when their children are grown and gone, Tom and Bondy Hodgkins decided to take on the care and education of a few more teenagers-about 300, in fact.

For the past five years, she has served as principal and he as president of Lake Forest Academy, a private, coeducational college-preparatory school with an enrollment of about two-thirds boarding and one-third day students.

Becoming the school`s head couple was not that dramatic a move for the Hodgkinses. Bondy, 55, short for Bondurant, her maiden name, had taught at a private school in Rhode Island before leaving work to raise a family. She later served as a trustee of Lake Forest Country Day School and became the day school`s first development officer, responsible for fund raising and alumni and public relations, a position she held for four years.

Thomas, 56, had built a career as a business executive with several companies, including one he started, Distribution Sciences Inc. of Des Plaines, a developer of software and information systems for freight companies, and he also worked as a management consultant. He still serves as a director at Distribution Sciences. He had served as chairman of the academy`s board of trustees from 1980 to 1985. In 1986, however, the longtime headmaster left because of differences with the trustees, and the school found itself in need of a replacement.

The board of trustees asked the Hodgkinses to take on the job. ``We were asked to consider it, on an interim basis,`` Tom recalled recently. ``We decided to do it, but only if we could take the interim out of it. We told the trustees we would do it as a team, and, if we had their support, we would do it as long as it seemed reasonable and proper.``

In addition to their combined expertise in business and education, the Hodgkinses offered the school a sense of continuity because of Tom`s previous association with the school. Tom had served eight years, five as chairman, on the board of trustees. Two of the couple`s four children and a niece and nephew they had raised had attended the academy. Tom himself was a 1953 graduate, and his grandfather was a member of the Class of 1895.

As for Bondy, ``Raising six teenagers was probably the best training you could have for this,`` she said with a smile. So the Hodgkinses sold their Lake Forest home and moved to the academy campus, a posh, wooded 193-acre estate built by J. Ogden Armour at the turn of the century. The academy moved there in 1947. Prior to that it was located on a portion of what is now the Lake Forest College campus

The Hodgkinses took over the academy with a very definite agenda in mind. The school had a reputation for academic excellence, but it had gone through some difficult times during the turbulence of the `60s and a clash of philosophies when the school merged in the 1970s with another Lake Forest school, the all-girls Ferry Hall.

One of the board`s first priorities was to attract and keep the best teachers the school could obtain. ``We`ve spent a lot of the last decade building our faculty, which is the key,`` Tom Said. ``We designed a new compensation package because these aren`t the days of Mr. Chips when people work for the love of it. Our teachers (29 full time) now are as well paid as any (private school teachers) in the country.``

``We don`t publish salaries internally and so I don`t think we should publish them externally.``

The makeup of the student body was just as important. When Tom went to school there, there were no minorities. Now 10 percent of the school`s students are black and another 10 percent are Asian. That`s significantly higher than national average, where 13 percent of the students in private schools are from minority backgrounds.

The academy charges $14,800 a year for tuition and board, a little less than Eastern boarding schools. The school devotes 10 percent of its operating budget to scholarships. About 25 percent of students receive some sort of financial aid. That`s why Tom gets angry when he encounters the perception that private schools such as the academy are elitist. Its students, 55 percent of whom are male, come from 14 states and 13 countries, from inner cities, small towns and wealthy suburbs.

``There aren`t very many places where environments like this exist and where the kids really interact together,`` he said.

Added Bondy: ``Lake Forest Academy is the most culturally, racially and economically diverse school in the country-by design. It`s neat and it`s working.``

Tom has applied his business expertise to keep the academy on sound financial footing. ``The endowment never has been as sizable as Harvard, but we want to make sure it is at least adequate to the task. By the end of the decade, with a little help from the stock market, it will be,`` he pledged.